Although this dinner adventure happened last week, and although I have much homework and many other stories from this weekend's small group travel excursion, I still feel the need to share this with all of you. I mean, Chinese Mexican food? Or should it be Mexican Chinese food... I'm not sure. It's a Mexican restaurant called "Panchos Mexican Restaurant" in the Zhejiang daxue (that's Zhejiang's best college, aka the 1 school that outranks us Zhejiang Gongye daxue folks) district. If you're ever in Hangzhou, and you find yourself missing Mexican food...well, too bad. Because this really isn't it. I'm no Mexican-food expert, but I'm pretty sure what we ate was no more than a decent attempt to copy the American "Mexican" restaurants that are themselves lacking in real Mexican flavor. However, if you are just in the mood for something a little less Chinese and a little more familiar, this is a fun place to go, watch some skanky American music videos on the wall-mounted TV, eat some recognizable food, and find yourself among other non-Chinese people!
I'd wager a bet that a Mexican restaurant would attract a lot of foreigners anyway, but another helping factor is the Zhejiang daxue right around the corner, which, judging from the restaurant crowd, has its fair share of foreign students. By foreign, I don't just mean American. In fact, because of a homework assignment for one of my classes in which I had to survey a foreigner who works in Hangzhou about his or her views on "cultural differences" in the professional world, I went up to one of these foreigners and introduced myself. Unfortunately for me, he had no work experience to share with me. However, what was interesting was the odd, fleeting understanding we had based on, shall we say, "mutual differences". He is Italian studying in China. While I am not Italian, I am also a foreigner. We're both students who speak English, Chinese, and another Romance language. The most peculiar thing of all, though, was that at a table of about 6 people, all of whom are foreign students at the college, he was the only one with conversational Chinese. The others had no idea what I was saying. How do you get around China? Especially when you go to school there?? I have no idea.
Well, we ate our fill of Chinese, American-Mexican food, but my friend Ariel and I still hadn't found our foreign prey. So, where to? Starbucks. Obviously.
Travel Tip # 6: If you're looking for coffee, Starbucks is pretty much the only game in the country. If you're looking for foreigners, Starbucks is a sad disappointment.
What?? No white people in Starbucks?? It can't be. Well, it was so. But there was still hope for our project yet. A Kappa, Puma, Papa-Johns, and KFC were but a few paces away. 5 American stores, and 5 ways to strike out hard. Where are all the white people??? Our only reassurance was that every other person in the class had the same lack of luck in finding a suitable foreigner. Oh well.